Dear you. You know who you are. You know what really what happened in high school because we’re the only ones that do. I’m glad we’re friends again, but this is what I wanted you to know, a year ago.

I thought about running away on an adventure yesterday. Just packing the bare minimum and scribbling a ‘goodbye, see you soon’ note for my mom, then running out to go find my destiny, like they must do in movies. It made me think of you, and how I used to talk about doing that all the time: travel. Read and write. Take Polaroid pictures in a hundred different places. What I can never remember is whether you agreed to go with me or not. What I do remember is that you let me fantasize.

After I thought about you, I curbed the impulse just like I’ve always done. I went back and I read over the stack of poems I wrote about you - the angry ones, the sad ones, the happy, grateful ones and the love ones. For the first time, I wasn’t sad about our fallout.

I’ve been tired a lot lately, like my body is failing me. Some of the weariness has to do with finishing high school and getting good grades. Honestly, a lot of it has to do with how I was so painfully hurt and irate when it came to you. I was woebegone. I’m sad now, but not in the same way. What still really gets to me, is that I’ll never get to tell you certain things again. I can never tell you anything again; you’re just a stranger who knows all my secrets now. Even though that kills me now sometimes, it doesn’t hurt very much in the same way anymore. It was much worse, for example, when I told you I couldn’t be around you for a while, because you’d become a trigger for me.

When we went our separate ways, after I gave you the envelope stuffed with letters, I missed you so badly I thought the medication for my impulse control had been replaced with atomic bombs. Something kept exploding inside me and made me collapse like a weak house of cards. I confused missing you with the love I had for you. Those aren’t the same thing. Aching about our ending and missing you and loving you was never the same thing. It’s because we were so much more than that.

My love was bigger than us, smaller than us, and right now I know that I can never really let that love go for good until I stop hiding it. It’s not a dirty secret. It’s not shameful. I loved you. That happened to us: the unrequited feelings and the fallout. I can’t undo it; I don’t want to. Not anymore. I’m really sorry and really scared that I’m making it public like this, but I’m more tired of keeping this a secret. I’m tired of acting like I don’t know why we stopped being friends in high school when people ask me about it. I believe that the love I had for you was what pushed us over the edge and made us stop being so close - that is, if we were ever even close to begin with.

I used to think that I couldn’t ever stop loving you; it felt like that it was a part of me now, and it was never leaving. It did, eventually. My theory was that I’d move on from you as time went on. When I was a senior in high school, I could finally acknowledge all the pain I thought I would forever associate with you. The same pain I used to bottle up tightly. I thought that the more time that gets put between my future self and our fallout, the more I would be okay talking about us. I’d still love you, but emotionally I would have moved on, and I’d be happy. I would love you, but that would not, and does not, define me. My pain does not determine who I am; my past won’t say anything about who I will be in five years. My feelings, thoughts, flaws, dreams, hopes - all of that makes me human, wholly and completely. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s all I can be and all I can offer, and you know what? That’s okay. It’s okay I was not someone you could ever love back the way I wanted you to do.

I used to think being in love with you crippled me because who the hell keeps choosing people they can't ever be serious about? I guess it's because since you would never be serious about me, I would never actually have to be serious about you. I would never really have to get vulnerable since it could all just be a fantasy in my head, and I could control everything that happened in that fantasy. That made me feel safe.

I stopped thinking that in the blackest hour of being without you, because that love gave you back to me. It might have hurt, but I would take it.

I’ve missed a lot at different points over the last year and a half. I’ve missed in different ways. What I missed most was the old you. To be honest, even when we tried to make things work, I knew you weren’t ever going to come back to me. If you did, you wouldn’t be the same, because it seemed like your friendship with N and relationship with M swallowed you up. Things were different between us the instant I realized I had feelings for you.

I know what happened wasn’t your fault or mine. It was just some circumstances we couldn’t avoid, no matter how hard we tried. I’ve also realized that just because we ended so badly - that does not define who we were before.

I remember once I was coming out of the bathroom, near the side doors close to my locker. I was about to fall apart and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just talk to you. Doing something like that seemed so hard when we’d spent so much of junior year drifting apart and dancing around each other. Dancing way past the elephant in the room. You came up and asked me if I was okay, if there was anything you could do.

I told you no on both accounts and I was starting to cry. I couldn’t stop. What scared me was that I was afraid that I’d never love you as much as I did then, even though the same thing was tearing me apart. I was scared all the little moments would get pulled out with the tide, and I would never be able to experience what it was like to know I loved you that much ever again. I was scared because I didn’t know how to fix us, and I was scared because I didn’t know how to tell you any of that.

I’m sorry that we were just not equipped to deal with so much miscommunication, silence, and confusion. I’m sorry nothing turned out the way we wanted it to. The fact that we never got to do any of the little future plans we made hurts more sometimes than knowing I can’t be your friend again, and you can never be mine. It hits me that we’ll never wander around at 3 a.m. again, never get an apartment and split the rent so that living as two young adults will be cheaper.

Maybe none of that would have ever happened. I think I gave you a lot more depth then you have. It's not like I have a lot of friends to hang out with here at home. I can only choose you. You had to have a lot more depth then you really did because if you didn't, then I would have to admit that the love I had for you was built on a flimsy, barely-there real girl whose friendship with me was always unequal. I based half of what I loved about you on a fantasy girl that was never going to materialize. The friendship wasn't balanced in high school and at the time I couldn't admit that to myself.

Anyway, I’m glad about all that. The lack of you forced me to grow up and confront a lot of ugly stuff about me I never wanted to deal with. But maybe I did deal with it. Maybe I still am. Either way, something inside me healed from all of this.

I’m glad you’ve never read the poems I wanted you to read. They’re wordy and too full of emotions. I think that’s the point of it all, though. I was trying to figure it all out. I was trying to find out who I was, with and without you.

There was a moment when I was with my family, and they were playing cards. I was smiling, pretending to be amused. Someone said something - for my life I can’t remember what - and this thought slammed into my head. It ricocheted through me and I realized: I am my own Princess Charming. You’re not going to save me from me. No one is except me, and to do that, I have to believe that I am worth it. I had to believe that my future self was more precious than pain. I chose to believe that. That was when, slowly, I started to stand on my own two feet, and rescue me from you.

It was amazing to know I didn’t lose you, to a certain extent. I think you knew I was always strong, that I was always much more than the scared little child inside who purged or cut their thighs to deal with some emptiness inside them. It took me a while to realize that too. Then I realized the emptiness wasn’t really emptiness, it was just me ignoring all the feelings I was too scared to deal with. So I dealt with them. I grew up because this is real life and you don’t always get what you want. Happy endings don’t exist; they just don’t. I was never going to get my happy ending with you.

I also realized, though, that we were always right where we were supposed to be, the entire time we were friends. I was the person I needed to be, and so were you. You helped me grow, and you helped me understand a lot about who I am even when we weren’t friends.

When I didn’t have you in my life anymore, at the beginning, I was so lost. Lost and alone. There was a long span of time before I realized: my memories are still here. I know where to find you now. It’s like I never lost you at all, because there you are.

Memories are good that way. I can remember us, relive things and keep living. When I’m ready, I can tuck you into a little drawer in my mind. I can say goodnight, goodbye and let go with the knowledge that I will never need to seek you out again.

We had the times of our lives, didn’t we?

I want you to realize all this someday. You won’t feel guilty or sad. I understand why everything happened the way it did. We happened, and we’re done now. You were meant to be a chapter in my life, and that’s alright.

I used to think that saying goodbye meant I’d have to let go of everything I loved about you. But I don’t; I can carry bits of you with me. I can forgive myself for spending so much of my time focused on you, on the lack of us.

The truth of it has never been clearer to me, my darling. You are, always, my darling.

Yours,
Saige